A half-hour passed and radio calls were made requesting reinforcements. The mood was tense and the water was silent. The eerie quiet of death.
But just when the search appeared hopeless, Sidwell pointed at a silhouette on the water that would have surely been missed by the untrained eye. A floodlight flashed on the area and I could make out a small ski boat that containing a man, who like his wife, was waving frantically. Next to him were two young boys. They were trapped on a sandbar.
The knot in my stomach slowly untied. I saw relief plastered on Sidwell’s face. There would be one less nightmare for him.
I left the jubilant divers around midnight and checked into a local motel. I was still on an adrenaline rush that made sleep impossible. So I checked my email and found the files that Christina sent about the settlement in the death of Kyle Jones’ parents.
His parents died in a boating accident. The boating manufacture that was potentially liable for the accident, quietly settled out of court with the Jones’ only heir, Kyle Jones.
The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning on a houseboat in Lake Cumberland, Kentucky.
Chapter 71
Ocracoke Island
October 5
The rain pelted down in sheets. If it was raining cats and dogs, then they were mountain lions and Saint Bernards. To Gwen, it appeared to be shooting horizontally, as she did her best to follow Grady Benson in her rented minivan.
She’d tracked Benson for the past few days. Her sources at the Rockfield PD told her that Officer Jones had been acting jumpy and agitated. He’d taken personal days for Wednesday through Friday, using the excuse of needing to secure his North Carolina home, facing the expectation that Hurricane Ava would hit the Outer Banks by the weekend. Benson booked a flight for Wednesday morning, but heavy rains in the Carolinas canceled all air traffic. So he scrambled to rent a car. Even though his response was logical, Gwen was suspicious of the urgency. She believed it had everything to do with Jeff Carter.
The rain began lightly when she hit the Pennsylvania Turnpike. By the time she passed by the nation’s capital it was a downpour of biblical proportions. And the constant struggle for visibility, while keeping a safe distance from Benson’s vehicle, gave her a splitting headache. He drove straight through, only stopping for gas and bathroom breaks at rest-stops outside of Scranton and Fredericksburg.
After twenty hours on the road, Gwen arrived at a deserted Cape Hatteras. Huge signs featuring skull and crossbones warned that Wednesday would be the final day of ferry transportation. The locals were evacuating in large numbers, but the atmosphere didn’t appear to be fraught with fear or panic. Hurricanes were not uncommon in these parts.
Gwen let Benson take the first ferry, choosing to wait the half-hour to catch the next one. Once arriving on the island, she made the journey to the north shore. The heavy wind created a sandstorm effect and the waves crashed ashore like they were angry. The noon skies were as black as midnight. She jumped with every crash of thunder.
She parked the minivan at a deserted home down the street, and entered the elements. A cold wind whipped and she felt like a hose was spraying precipitation into her face at point blank range. Trees swayed, to the point that they appeared on the verge of being ripped out of the ground.
She found a hiding spot behind a sand dune that provided a direct view of Benson’s house. His vehicle was parked in the driveway.
The only thing keeping her warm was thoughts of her night with JP. And then as if he were reading her thoughts, her phone rang.
“I miss you,” she shouted over the relentless whipping of wind.
“Not as much as I miss you,” he said back, always competitive. He seemed to be having equal trouble hearing her over the roar of voices.
“Where are you, JP … the airport?” Gwen asked, never taking her eyes off Benson’s house.
“Actually, I’m in a bar called Cransky’s.”
“Very nice. I’m squatting in a sand dune in the middle of a hurricane and you are out enjoying yourself!”
“Hurricane? Where are you, Gwen?”
“I followed Kyle, or Grady, or whatever his name is, to Ocracoke.”
“Gwen, this is no time to be a hero. You should hear some of the stuff I’ve learned about this guy. Please get out of there.”
Loving JP and letting JP get the last word were two separate issues. “You should have seen how desperate he was to get here. I know he has Carter trapped somewhere down here. I can’t leave now.”
“Are you crazy? Did you alert anyone that you’re even there?”
“I just told you. Now tell me what you learned on your trip, I know you’re dying to impress me.”
He let out a frustrated sigh. “According to police reports, Cransky’s is the last place that Phillip Tompkins was seen. I’ve talked to a couple of regulars who were here that day. Timothy Kent, one of the guys Tompkins hit with the car, was the one who had killed Benson’s parents. The records might be sealed, but the local gossip wasn’t. They remembered Tompkins leaving with a mystery man that nobody had seen in the bar, before or since. They couldn’t give a really good description after twenty-some years, other than he was rather nondescript, but one guy did remember that he wore a US Air Force shirt.”
“I’m impressed. I guess you are doing a little work in between beers. Did you learn anything in Arizona?”
“I met the mysterious Lucy. She had worked with Jones on the Gilbert PD. She basically confirmed that Benson was a psycho who once assaulted her when he discovered that she and Jones had driven home drunk one night. She also told me that Benson was set off by a GNZ report I did on a judge named Raymond Buford, who was known for letting drunk drivers off the hook.”
“That doesn’t sound like good news for the judge.”
“Let’s just say that Benson didn’t let him off the hook. As is his M.O, it was made to look like an accident, but it doesn’t fit into our anniversary theory.”
“Although, it does fit our pattern of not being able to prove anything.”
“Maybe so, but I can prove where Buford died.”
“Why does the location of his death matter?” she shouted over a loud crackle of thunder.
“You are on Benson’s street, right?”
“Yes, I’m across the street from his house.”
“Well, look down about three houses from Benson’s. That was Buford’s home.”
She gasped, suddenly feeling that they were in way over their heads.
He continued, “I traveled to Lake Havasu yesterday, to look into Leonard Harris’ death. I learned that there’s a section of many houseboats where exhaust fumes gather that the experts call the ‘death zone.’ Benson rented the boat-it wasn’t a coincidence. He sent Harris to his death.”
“And you can prove that?”
“No, but Kyle Jones’ parents retired in Lake Cumberland, Kentucky, which happens to be the houseboat capital of the United States. Christina was able to get at the court documents, and learned that they died in the exact same way as Leonard Harris. That’s how Benson learned of the tactic.”
This news sent a shiver down Gwen’s spine. As if on cue, Benson exited the beach house, got into his rental car and drove off. She knew she had to get some hard evidence.
“He just left … I’m going in.”
He began screaming at her, but eventually saw it her way. Mainly because there was nothing he could do about it from Seattle.
“I’ll be careful. Is there anything else you want to tell me before I go?” she asked, while struggling to climb over the wet sand of the dune.